Changes to the GP Patient Survey

2022 survey

1. Questionnaire changes

Minor changes were made to the questionnaire in 2022 to ensure that it continued to reflect how primary care services are delivered and how patients experience them. This followed more substantial changes in 2021. The changes were all cognitively tested with patients.

New questions:

• Q14 “Who asked you for information about your reasons for making an appointment?”

• Q25 “Did your appointment happen at the time, or during the slot, you were given?”

• Q37 “Would you describe yourself as having “long COVID”, that is, you are still experiencing symptoms more than 12 weeks after you first had COVID-19, that are not explained by something else?”

Minor changes were made to the following questions (trend data remains):

• an additional code about looking for information online was removed – included in error in 2021 in the online survey only, Q18 (“What did you do when you did not get an appointment?”)

• question remains unchanged but its position in the questionnaire has shifted (trend data remains), Q33 “Have you, at any time in the last 12 months, avoided making a general practice appointment for any reason?”

• routing now includes those who selected that they had “long COVID” at Q37, as well as a long-term condition at Q36 (analysis has confirmed trend data remains), for the following questions:

  • Q38 (“Do any of these conditions reduce your ability to carry out your day-to-day activities?”)
  • Q39 (“How confident are you that you can manage any issues arising from your condition (or conditions)?”)
  • Q40 (“In the last 12 months, have you had enough support from local services or organisations to help you to manage your condition (or conditions)?”)
  • Q41 (“Have you had a conversation with a healthcare professional from your GP practice to discuss what is important to you when managing your condition (or conditions)?”)
  • Q42 (“Have you agreed a plan with a healthcare professional from your GP practice to manage your condition (or conditions)?”)

  • Q43 (“How helpful have you found this plan in managing your condition (or conditions)?”)

More significant changes were made to the following questions (because of these changes results for these questions are not comparable with results from 2021 or prior, even where question wording remains similar):

• changes to responses at Q13“ Were you asked for any information about your reasons for making the appointment?”

• additional response options at Q50 “Were you successful in getting an NHS dental appointment?” and updated to allow selection of multiple responses.

• response options removed at Q52 “Why haven’t you tried to get an NHS dental appointment in the last two years?”

The following question was removed: 

• “At any time over the last 12 months, have you or someone you live with shielded at home due to being vulnerable to COVID-19 because of pre-existing health issues?”

2. Methodology changes

Change to sampling strategy

In previous years, the practice sample size was based on aiming for a set confidence interval for each practice. This year, the sample size was determined to deliver at least 100 responses in each practice and 200 responses in each Primary Care Network (PCN), where possible, and 720,000 responses overall. This resulted in a similar number of target responses for each practice as the previous approach of achieving a certain width of confidence interval. In addition, any differences in terms of oversampling certain PCNs has been corrected by the selection weights, so this change in sampling approach will not impact trends.

Changes to mailing strategy

There were two major changes to the mailing strategy in 2022, compared with the 2021 survey. Due to a traffic accident involving the first mailing, fieldwork was delayed by one week (starting on the second Monday in January (10 January 2022), rather than the first Monday in January as in 2021.

The other change was an additional SMS reminder to all non-respondents sent a week after the second reminder mailing. This was intended to minimise the drop in response rate, compared with the previous year.

This year, Ipsos and NHS ENGLAND also trialled several experiments on a sub-sample of GPPS respondents. These experiments tested methods for moving more respondents online and reducing outward and return postage.

More details of these experiments, and copies of the updated materials used for 2022 fieldwork, can be found in the 2022 technical annex.

Change to weighting

Due to the scheduled abolition of CCGs in 2022, the weighting calibration has moved from CCG level to ICS level. For more details, please see the 2022 technical annex.

3. Organisational changes

Due to the abolition of CCGs, data are provided at ICS and PCN level, in addition to practice and national level from this year onwards.

Practice level ICS changes

This year, the following practices (that are represented in the 2022 survey) moved between ICSs (using practice codes):

• C84001, C84008, C84013, C84024, C84035, C84094, C84101, C84692 and Y05346 moved from QF7 (South Yorkshire ICS) to QT1 (Nottingham and Nottinghamshire ICS);

• C83653 moved from QJM (Better Lives Lincolnshire) to QK1 (Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland ICS);

• M85002, M85009, M85019, M85020, M85069, M85082, M85098, M85124, M85145, M85164, M85176, M85178, M85634, M85676, M85684, M85697, M85715, M85721, M85757, M85778, M85797, Y00412, Y00471, Y00492, Y01057 and Y06378 moved from QUA (Black Country ICS) to QHL (Birmingham and Solihull ICS);

• C81077, C81081, C81106, C81615 and C81640 moved from QOP (Greater Manchester Integrated Care Partnership) to QJ2 (Joined Up Care Derbyshire);

• K83023 moved from QUE (Cambridgeshire & Peterborough ICS) to QPM (Northamptonshire ICS); and,

• M88006 moved from QHL (Birmingham and Solihull ICS) to QUA (Black Country ICS).

Practice information is taken from the NHS Digital Organisation Data Service “epraccur” reference file. In some cases, the file maps practices to CCGs, ICSs or regions that no longer exist where practices  have closed before the implementation of higher geography changes. Where this is the case, the ICS and region for these practices were updated to reflect the current NHS commissioning structures, as of April 2022.

ICS level changes

This year, there were no whole mergers or splits of ICSs (there continue to be 42 areas and all have retained the same NHS organisation code). Specific boundary changes of the ICSs have been reflected in the ‘Practice level ICS changes’ above and outlined by NHS Digital on the following page ‘Integrated Care Boards - NHS Digital’.